My first trip to Singapore and this is the place I got to stay on doing my booking from RCI. Everything about this hotel was good. The location is just perfect with 2 MRT stations in the vicinity(100 meters and 300 meters).
There is a new MRT station being built right in front of the Hotel Entrance and will be completed by this year end.
There is a nice Seven Eleven outlet also located just next to the Hotel, where travelers can shop for any of their daily needs.
They offered a good comfortable room. All tour packages were booked with ease by the hotel staff.

Being pure Vegetarians we had fewer options for Food both for Breakfast and Lunch/Dinner. Although the staff was courteous enough to make a few vegetarian dishes for us on request.

was the end of a two and half week holiday in Vietnam and Singapore and we wanted something more than a cramped room. We paid 250 USD a night for a suite. The rooms were of good sizes. The bedroom was en-suite and there was another toilet attached to the living room. A first for us. We would not normally pay this much, but it seemed good value compared to some of the basic rates that were being charged for just a bedroom.

The staff were very helpful, one guy spending a lot of time trying to explain how we could get to some of the greener areas of Singapore. The breakfasts were reasonable with a decent number of options.

There's a 24 hr 7/11 and a small but varied food-court next to the hotel. There's a bus stop and metro station very close.

The one thing that could be a problem is the construction work outside the hotel. This is related to the metro and we were told was due to continue for a few years. It had no impact on us whist we were there. They even put Xmas decorations all round the shuttering.

I enjoyed my stay at the Bayview last time, and so on my next trip to Singapore (this time to watch the Wicked musical at Marina Bay Sands) I booked the hotel again.

There are a number of changes in this trip compared to my last one:

1. There is some construction work being done on Bencoolen street itself. I didn't know this until the taxi cab turned left to Bencoolen coming from Middle Road. It's not that big of a hassle but it's noisy during daytime and the taxi stand right in front of the hotel is gone temporarily.

2. The Bras Basah Circle Line Station is open! This is awesome! If walking two or three blocks to the Dhoby Ghaut station is a turnoff, now all you have to do is walk to the corner or Bras Basah and the MRT is entrance is there on your left.

In this trip I was able to try the pool, and it was wonderful. I don't know if other guests use this, but I have it all to myself when I went up to the 15th floor.

After almost two years, hardly anything changed in the buffet breakfast. If your package doesn't have this, consider yourself blessed. The selection is lousy. As alternatives, there's a 24-hour Kopitiam place a stone's throw away from the hotel that serves chicken rice, dimsum, laksa, duck rice and whole lot more. If that's not your fancy, walk a little more to the Wendy's Hamburgers right next to it along Bras Basah.

Our room came with free WIRED internet. What's funny is you have to get the network cable from the lobby, where you have to sign some form saying that you'll return it when you check out. That wasn't my experience the first time I stayed in this hotel. A lot of people must be packing this along with their laptops. Talking about internet, it's slow, even by Philippine standards. I was hardly getting a 1 Mbps connection.

I had aircon problems the first time I was here (it was dripping), and I encountered another aircon problem this time - it wasn't making the room cooler. I had to call the reception to have them fix it. Only after the maintenance guy cleaned the filter and made some adjustments did the aircon start to work properly.

Will I come back? Yes.

"Bayview" is a real misnomer, because the only view from my window was the wall of an adjacent building; if your room faces Bencoolen Street, you'd get a view of the massive construction works there, but no bay. I suppose that's the irony that comes along with a chain named "Bayview".

It's an ok hotel. It's not great, and it's a bit lacking even for Singapore. My room had a vague aroma of gravy or institutional dinners or something indescribeable. The door would never close properly on its own; you'd have to give it a good hard shove to shut it. That might seem petty, but I've got used to walking in my room, and letting the door swing shut behind me; at the Bayview, this always left the door ajar.

The room itself is quite gloomy. Even with all the lights turned on, it's still pretty dark. Of course, when the lights were all on it was easier to see the marks in the carpet where somebody had singed it with an iron, so perhaps the dim bulbs were a blessing in disguise.

Speaking of the iron, housekeeping wasn't exactly stellar. I got up one morning, ironed a shirt and then left the hotel, leaving the ironing board and iron out so that it would cool off. Every other hotel I've been in for the last two years, I'd return to find the iron and ironing board packed away, but although somebody came in to make up the bed, nobody thought to pack the iron away. It's the details that are distracting...

On a more positive note, there's free wi-fi, but only in the lobby, not in the rooms. Breakfast, though free, is pretty lacklustre; there was some fresh fruit (melon or pineapple) that was utterly flavourless, bread and a few fried breakfast items, of which I had the hash browns which were instantly forgettable.

The hotel is in a good location, close to several MRT stops (Dhoby Gaut is the nearest) so the gloomy rooms and the disappointing breakfast are survivable. I wouldn't recommend this as a hotel that you'd be happy to spend time in that wasn't asleep.